Abu
Ghraib and the torture of our enemies no longer light up cable news with
that mind numbing repetition of perp walks and stacked nude bodies. The
military, we are assured, is taking care of the problem and the slate will
be wiped clean once again for a little while. The enlisted kids being
punished now and in the future will take the rap for "getting caught." The
career officers will escape accountability, just as they did in Vietnam
over 30 years ago.

The military had to be reborn after Vietnam,
but the job was only partially done. We never came to terms with the
Tiger Cages we ran where over 9,000 prisoners were tortured by the
South Vietnamese police. A Time poll revealed that 80% of
respondents did not even want to know about such things. The same must be
true about Abu Ghraib.

The military needed then and still needs
today, a genuine code of honor without winks and nods. After all these
years I still wonder what became of the practice of taking Viet Cong
prisoners up in helicopters for "interrogation." Do we still do it today
with the enemy of choice?

What would Alberto Gonzales or Condi Rice
think of threatening to throw VC out of helicopters for not spilling their
guts? Would that be covered by the Geneva Convention; could the VC be
considered illegal combatants, not playing by the rules of war and not
dressing in a properly identifiable military garb? The ruling might be
that the Geneva Convention does not apply to air born torture. It is not
far fetched to suggest that the Abu Ghraib syndrome was, perhaps, born in
Viet Nam.

But what if the drop was only 5-10 feet?
Would that be torture if you were blind folded.?

(All I remember is being on the bed of a
Huey Helicopter with guys with U.S. insignia Brass on their shirts. The VC
had a bag over his head. The interpreter kept threatening to throw the
bastard over the side if he didn't talk. The guy really started to stink.
He wasn't going to talk. The guy in charge said to head back to base)

The nice thing about wearing U.S. brass
insignia is that they replace rank and branch--you're a spook. You could
be taken for a private but with the possibility of being a colonel. I was
the II Corps Project Officer for" Duffelbag" in 1970, the Army version of
Igloo White.

One of the important rules at Ft. Benning's
school to train young boys to be infantry officers used to be," get the
task done and don't quibble if you fail." You are sternly warned about
breaking the rules then given an assignment that can only be accomplished
by breaking some rule, particularly, do not leave the base to procure some
item that can only be found off base. Translation: "Don't get caught."

When the Commander gets on the phone and
says, "Do whatever it takes", it will get done. "Do it but don't get
caught" (no cameras allowed). Maybe that has all changed, but I don't
think so. The evidence suggests it has not. In fact, all the evidence lies
in the other direction

After 9/11/01 there was endless banter about
the lack of intelligence. The Bush administration left no doubt that the
goal was to take out the enemy before they could attack us. Was there
doubt in anyone's mind that gathering human intelligence was the number
one priority throughout government? And there were not any limiting
conditions placed on this quest. The American people would not suffer one
hangnail from the bogeymen terrorists. They were to be tortured and killed
before they could harm any American

What this led to was the ongoing torture of
an entire country, Iraq.

We were reviled when we returned from
Vietnam, not because of war crimes but because of the loss of a war for
the first time in our history. America despises losers and would rather
not know about war crimes. In reality, only losers resort to war crimes.
We lost in Vietnam and we have lost the war in Iraq. You can't spin it any
other way.

Robert Gaiek
left the military a Captain and is the recipient of a Purple Heart, Air
Medal and Bronze Star with clusters and now owns a small business.